Monday, 7 November 2011

Courtesy of Liane Grassi and her blog, here is her description of my presentation in Sao Paolo on "KM Culture". Liane was one of the two simultaneous translators for the event.

"Nick Milton focused on showing us how to create an organizational culture to
support knowledge management. It is important to understand that sharing
knowledge and asking questions can be met with resistance due to many factors.
Employers/Employees wonder whether implementing knowledge management will
represent a burden to their day jobs. The counter argument to this view is quite
simple. It is important to seek, share and re-use knowledge for the good of the
organization, but the best tools in the world will not work if people really
don’t want to use them. There is an urge to change knowledge emphasis inside the
organizations and it can only be done by taking into account the individuals
that work in them and are part of them. The old culture considers knowledge a
personal property or advantage. People can perceive new knowledge as a threat to
their own knowledge and admitting ‘I don’t know’ can be thought of as a sign of
weakness.

"Shifting to the culture of “we
know”, perceiving knowledge as collective or community property and advantage,
will make the same individuals feel that sharing knowledge helps them, that new
knowledge improves personal knowledge and that admitting “I don’t know” is the
first step to learning. Nick Milton also showed a video (leadership from a
dancing guy – available on YouTube), which was a successful way of showing how
to create a movement and how following great ideas is important for implementing
or creating something new. The role of the leader treating his followers as
equals and being easy to follow – even instructional - is very important. But
without followers no movement is created, and leadership has been
over-glorified. All people in the organization are important for the creation of
a culture that supports knowledge management. Nobody should be left apart".

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Nick Milton

I am a director for Knoco, the international firm of knowledge management consultants, offering a range of knowledge management services, including knowledge management strategy, knowledge management framework development, and knowledge management implementation services.
I also have an interest in Lessons Learned